Warm salty tears rolled down my melancholy face onto my black dress, as I spaced out at my white sandals my grandmother had bought me. The ten-year-old mindset was to gaze around the room at all the faces overtaken with grief, constantly asking myself "Why do bad things happen to good people?" As a child not knowing the answer to this question was hard to understand the point of this lesson in life that has been thrown at me. Not able to bring my grandmother back to life was absolutely painful to watch as she was lowered into her grave. In 1996, my grandmother, Teresa was diagnosed with lung cancer, and she took her last breath April 30th, 2010. Communicating in Spanish with my grandmother at ten was difficult to tackle, but we had our
The sinking feeling that comes from the reality of the loss and the pain experienced by our dear friends could not be fixed. As we entered into the next week, the focus was how could we help them make it through
Even though I am Mexican I never had to speak Spanish because
Entry 1 The worst news I’ve ever received was when my mom told me that my aunt had cancer. Fortunately, the cancer was only at stage 1. At first, I couldn’t believe it since she has always been healthy and I’ve never heard anything about her being sick. Eventually, I came to accept the fact that my aunt had cancer even if I didn’t want to.
She has served as a role model to me of not only compassion, but of showing respect and love to anyone, no matter their circumstances. I have experienced firsthand the horrors and miracles of this profession. In 2011, I was able to see through a patient’s eyes when my Uncle was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Standing by through dozens of rounds of chemotherapy, watching the deterioration of muscle and memory, it was excruciating, watching a man I had known my entire life being molded into someone new by this cancer. Those years of watching my uncle fight through chemotherapy inspired my dreams to become a person who can help those that are in pain, to heal their wounds and to be able to tell a family that their loved one will make it through the
He came home from school one day, his parents were talking. It wasn’t until after they had switched to English that he realized they had been speaking Spanish. Now you would think having been born to English speaking parents, here in the United States, that I wouldn’t understand a language barrier. Growing up I watched my cousin struggle to communicate with others. He lost his hearing when he was 5 years old.
Spanish was my first language and neither one of my parents knew english. I would go to school and just listen and try to learn every little thing I could get my hands
On December 5th, 2011 a woman who loved me so much passed away, leaving me with a mountain to climb of depression and a event that would change everything that I knew and loved. When I was a young girl my grandma was my person, my rock, my everything, every time their was a problem I would go to her a she would help me through it. She really helped me when I was six and my parents informed me that they were going to get a divorced, at that age I didn’t understand why I thought that everything was great in our family. During this time my grandma took care of me greatly and made sure I was loved and cared for. I can remember every part of when she died.
Aunt With Cancer “There's your life before cancer and there's your life after cancer. I can't say it didn't happen, because i've learned so much from it.-Rebecca Bluestone”. It was a day like no other. Little did I know that the day had started bad but later during that day it would get worse. It all started with a phone call one that no one could ever forget and it would change not only my aunts life but my whole family's life forever.
When I was twelve a six letter word with such definition tore my world apart. I didn’t know what to do at that moment, I didn’t know how to react to the dreadful news. And to my surprise, it started with one phone call, a phone call that simply changed who I am, but not just who I am, but how I view the world. I never thought it can happen to me or my family, I thought we were free from such an intrusive disease. However, I was wrong, way wrong.
It makes me feel much sorrow because we were once a happy family we would all show up and have those happy warm moments around the holidays and everything would just make you feel warm inside and your mind would be at ease. Now you can see the pain in Grandmas eyes and It hurts me because I know that there is nothing that I can do or say to make things better they seem to just get worse. Grandma has been ill for some time now and the best gift that I think we could give her is to get along. I don’t like to think about the end much. What I do like to think about is the first time I went to Grandmas house and felt at peace and felt
I have been a smoker for over 10 years and even though I have a fear of Cancer I continued to smoke. Almost every two weeks I would perform a self -breast exam on myself just to make sure I didn’t feel any changes. One day I did a breast exam on myself and noticed a change in my breast tissue; this had me very worried. I called my DR to make an appointment, however they asked questions with symptoms I didn’t have. They asked was I 40 and had a mammogram screening, did I see blood from my chest, and any history.
In 8th grade, my school brought back Spanish after not having it as part of the curriculum for several years. A lot of my classmates including myself didn’t do too well and I remembered one of my friends asked our homeroom teacher to come in to observe Spanish class. I just couldn’t grasp the language. Our school year was divided into trimesters.
Losing someone you love dearly is one of the hardest things anyone can go through. Sometimes it hurts so bad that you may yourself, “What’s the point of being here anymore?” I ask myself that question all the time, ever since my Grandmother passed away. April 22nd, 2016, was a very emotional experience for my family and me. The day started off like any other day for us.
My grandmother passed away last Sunday, and until then I hadn’t ever really experienced death. There are many emotions that one expects to feel: sadness, pain, guilt, regret. Yet, when my mother opened the door that Sunday morning, her eyes warm brown eyes turned red and puffy, to tell me that my grandmother had passed away the night before as I slept in the room above hers, I felt only relief. I always expected my mind to be a flurry of emotions, but I never anticipated “relief” to be in the mix. What people don’t realize is that my grandmother’s burden is really the family’s burden.
I come from a Hispanic background, so I have been exposed to the Spanish language all my life. I understand it perfectly, with the exception of certain regionally idioms, but I am working on perfecting my speaking and grammar abilities. Both my parents were born in Honduras and came to the US during their early to mid twenties. At home, my father speaks to my sister and I in English (since he's fluent in both languages), but my mother speaks to us in Spanish. More recently in the years, I have been increasingly talking Spanish to my mom and with other relatives and family friends in hopes of improving my speaking abilities.